When 15 per cent of graduates default in three years, there's problems with a system.

One of the oft-repeated claims made in favour of the Government's three-fold increase in the cost of university attendence is the fact that Britain's universities are being out-competed by better-funded American ones.

But where does all that money come from? Fees from the students. And where do they get the money to pay the fees? Massive student loans. And what happens when costs increase but wages don't? People start to default. A lot.

The big takeaways from the Senate HELP committee’s report on the for-profit college sectors were that the institutions (a) are expensive, (b) produce a whole lot of dropouts, and (c) are mostly financed by the federal government. If that weren’t bad enough, they only spend about 17 percent of their funds on actual instruction, and a whole lot more on marketing — including lobbying the feds to pay their bills. A new release (pdf) from Moody’s builds on these findings, and concludes that the situation is not only bad but getting worse. Students at for-profit colleges are defaulting on their loans sooner and sooner after entering:

It may be that Britain still needs to change to compete with the US. But mimicking a system in which 15 per cent of graduates are defaulting on their lowns just three years after entering repayment doesn't seem like the best plan.